School board hears concerns on sex offender policy

A local school board heard concerns over their policy on sex offenders at the weekly meeting Monday night.

Some parents in Saginaw Township were upset to learn another parent was a registered sex offender.

A woman says she recently learned that the parent of another student is a convicted sex offender, and now she wonders why other parents weren't notified.

The woman didn't want to reveal her identity, but she couldn't hide her concern about another parent whose child attends the same school as one of her kids.

TV5 wanted to know what the law says about where convicted sex offenders are allowed on school grounds, if at all.

Michigan State Trooper Rick Jones is in charge of keeping tabs on hundreds of sex offenders in mid-Michigan. He says convicted sex offenders are banned from loitering on school grounds, even if they are parents of a student who attends the school.

Legally, sex offenders are allowed to drop their kids off at school but cannot loiter on school grounds.

Jones says that school districts typically do not have a system in place to find out if parents are sex offenders, so he suggests checking yourself on the state's database.

Many districts say they would not notify parents in order to protect the privacy of the child. Even though the sex offender registry is public, the district says the registry does not identify sex offenders' children's names.